The Crucible
by wayofthepen
Summary: The world is bleak, the prospects grim, the aid sporadic, and the fight unending. But he will never abandon it. Written for the Conduit CYOA.


Whenever possible, governments kept the existence and location of Bridges within their borders a secret.

This policy was explained away by the usual secular reasons – Bridges were a potential invasion route for hostile powers, they were a source of unique resources and knowledge, it was a matter of public safety…There were stiff penalties awaiting those who broke any of the numerous laws regarding all things extraterrestrial, but many people had reasons to ignore the edicts of politicians.

In the case of the revelation of the location and nature of the Greenland Bridge, it was simply - 'It needed to be done.'

It was the only bridge of its kind currently known, and the world it connected to leaked misery and rain to Earth in equal measure. The temperature around the bridge wavered between freezing and thaw, turning miles of land into a grey mess of perpetual rain, fog, and slush. The bridge was watched over by a multinational contingent of soldiers, and the turnover rate was high. The environment made psychological problems endemic to those stationed there. Dangerous creatures sometimes slipped over the bridge, burrowing beneath the ice and snow to escape the light, moving at night and waiting in ambush for any that crossed their path.

The world this bridge connected to was inhabited. The few people still alive lived under siege, and they'd lived that way for a long, long time. But there was no aid offered, no grand expeditions planned, not after the first disastrous attempt to offer relief. This world was more dismal than the Prison and held worse monsters than the Sunless Sea. Only Conduits were willing to make the trip, when they could pull themselves away from marketing and movie deals, from entire worlds of sunlit beaches and endless pleasures.

Few of them made the trip.

To travel to the corner of nowhere, to hike across a frozen hell of ice and hidden teeth, to find the unmarked center and push through from murk to shadow…it took a special kind of person. These rare few followed the call of the first Conduit to find this world, who had hammered out from twisted space a path straight and narrow with fire and blood for those willing to follow.

The path brought Conduits to a city - perhaps the only city left on that bleak and lightless world. From there, the grim-faced inhabitants directed visitors to a broken tower, a squat and sedate home for the city's champion. Born of Earth, he felt more at home here than upon the world of his birth. He lived alone but for a creature born from his own blood and inner fire, his sole companion and ally in battle, his magnum opus. Here, in the ruins of a king's palace, he would meet the Conduits that came to this world and hear their reasons for coming.

Because it needed to be done…was the answer he wanted to hear. But instead?

'I wanna fight some monsters!'

'I'll just respawn if I die, so it's cool, right?'

'I heard this world gives you like, awesome fighting powers. WAA-CHA!'

For a short time, at least, he'd have help in the endless battle. Conduits from the Crystal Spire chased down those creatures who thought themselves safe in the sky and scourged them with lightning. Others sang songs of creation and destruction to re-shape a battlefield in their favor. Monsters that relied on trickery and intimidation were pounded into dust by unthinking golems.

But then the Conduits with these powers would see their friends killed, or they would die themselves. Then they'd wake, pained, drained, and naked, and face the prospect of doing it all over again. The first Conduit to come here would soon return, bloody but alive and dragging a sack of viscera, and they would ask him how long he'd been doing this. How many times had he died? Why did he stay here?

The answers sent them fleeing - back to endless beaches, to constant pleasures. If they ever stayed, it was only long enough to complain about the loss of their clothes and the cost of their ren-faire armor and genuine made-in-Taiwan katanas.

Some were stubborn enough to try and go back out to collect their lost belongings, as if the monsters that haunted this world followed some kind of predictable video-game logic. A scream of frustration would announce their return. The latest batch to come here had just had their fill of it. They'd all come unprepared and would all be leaving naked if he hadn't offered them some spare clothes. They never seemed to remember what the Earth-side of the bridge was like.

There were days that he was tempted to leave with them. Maybe…maybe if one of them would stay behind in his place…he could go home for a little while, and see the sun once again. And every time he watched a conduit leave, he would turn away from the line of flames he'd created to mark the way back home. Back to the city. Back to the fight.

But today, something caught his eye. One of the conduits was slower to leave than the rest.

He was young. Bright-eyed. Had likely never seen a monster before today that wasn't on a computer screen. But he'd been the last of his group to fall, fighting cautiously and smart. Fearful, but not panicking. Even after a beast had impaled him on a horn and driven him into a wall hard enough to make the unceasing rain turn red and chunky, those eyes had not lost their brightness when the Conduit found him revived and waiting at the nearest Bond Fire. The Conduit was starting to think he was different from the rest of them...but he was still leaving with his friends, wasn't he?

A paw on his shoulder shook him from his thoughts and nearly knocked him out of the tower. His homunculus had joined him at the window, and gestured with her horns toward the retreating group. Silence passed between them, and she slammed her haunches into her creator as she went back to being on all fours, padding across the room like an oversized cat to lie on her bed, looking as wise and regal as the sphinx he'd patterned her body after.

As the young man was on the path to leave this world, the elder Conduit ran up to join him. They spoke of meaningless things, having little in common. The elder asked the young man's name, and promptly forgot it. They reached the last fire in the path, and said their goodbyes.

But before the young man could take that last step, he found a flame thrust into his hands. A tiny, guttering, purple-silver spark that seemed pathetic in scale compared to the darkness that surrounded them. But it did not extinguish when the elder conduit released it. The youth did not discard it, even knowing that such a thing would bind him to this world, drawing away a tiny bit of his power and connection to whatever other worlds he walked.

While the youth studied the tiny light in his hands, the elder conduit turned away. While his friends departed through space and time, the youth paused and waited until the elder Conduit was out of sight, following his silhouette as it passed the bond fires, wondering at the odd flicker of light that shone from under his cloak. And then he, too, finally left the dismal world, cradling the spark in his hands.

The elder Conduit thought little of it as he returned to his tower. The few years he'd spent here had seemed like an eternity, and he'd spent that time alone, with only his homunculus to walk beside him in battle. She was stretched out in front of a roaring fire, waiting for his return, looking as smug as only a feline could.

He wasn't expecting the young Conduit to come back. To him, hope was something to be cut and torn from the Other's bloody carcasses, not spent wistful and waiting for something beyond his control. But he had to admit, and cracked a rare smile at the thought, that other conduits would hear about this world. They would join the fight, if only for a little while, and help push the darkness back just a little further.

And if they asked him why he stayed here of all worlds, with all the wonders of the universe within his reach, he'd tell them. It was a simple thing. It was the same thing he told himself every time he turned away from the road home to Earth, and every time he went forth to do battle with the darkness one more time.

It needed to be done.


End file.
